On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 04:31:33PM +0000, Tony van der Hoff wrote: > I know it's a sensitive subject, and I really don't want to upset the list, > there's been enough of that already, but why are some people so afraid of > systemd?
Well, there seem to be several reasons. In no particular order: 1) It's new. Some people hate new things, simply because they've become accustomed to the old things. 2) Because it's new, it has not had a chance to reach maturity. There are still flaws being worked out. 3) It's extremely large. Compared to sysvinit, it is a sprawling leviathan of software. Not only does size = bugs, but some people object to the increase in memory usage, disk space usage, etc. 4) It does way more than just replace /sbin/init. It has components that try to bring up network interfaces, implement DNS resolution, implement NTP, implement cron-like functionality, and so on. Many people feel this is over-reaching. (And to be fair, Debian disables most of these optional subsystems by default.) 5) It does not write logs in human-readable files. You need systemd's tools to read systemd's logs. This makes post mortem diagnostics much more difficult. 6) It is more complex than sysvinit. There's a lot to learn. However, it should be noted that there is an enormous degree of *hidden* complexity in sysv-rc (decades worth of hacks developed to work around sysv-rc's fundamental flaws), and these things go away with systemd. So, really it's trading one set of complexity for a different set of complexity. But some people don't see it that way. 7) Some people have developed a personal dislike of the author. I'm sure there are other reasons, but these are the main ones of which I'm aware.